


the stream, overflowing

by distortopia



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-18 21:12:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4720610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distortopia/pseuds/distortopia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do not be afraid; our fate<br/>Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”</p><p>― Dante Alighieri, Inferno</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If the ocean had a voice, it would have called out through the splashes of the bluff eroding; a tireless call of the void. The fall from such a height promised to knock them both unconscious. The water, cold concrete at first, would engulf them greedily, close over their heads, and the blood woud rise up like an aura, the smoke to the dying embers of their fire. Taking everything into account, this was not the death Will had imagined for himself. A blade made more sense, and then the familiar sensation of choking on the coppery taste of blood, rather than through lungs oversaturated with water. Something blindingly red, something elegant and tragic – God’s design.

  
However, as they plunge into the darkness, awareness does not leave him. There are arms slipping away and cold, restless water seeping into the cracks of their embrace. He feels like his entire body is a bruise, throbbing, waves closing over their head – and Hannibal’s eyes are closed. Hannibal’s face is lax, ashen, uncomfortably peaceful, as his body starts to give in to the pull of the deep.

  
The feeling of blinking underwater is a strange one, he decides. As he snakes an arm around Hannibal’s waist, taught as the snare of a trap, he also decides that there’s an eery beauty to the way strands of sandy blond hair frame Hannibal’s head, like the aureola of sainthood. Swimming up, his mind becomes a void, overcome by the screaming of his lungs, and he comes up sputtering and choking, panting heavily as he brings Hannibal’s head up.

  
There are quite a few self-made decisions in his life, he also concludes, when he drops Hannibal down in the sand and kneels next to him. Decisions that have taken over him. Maybe he knew from the moment he killed Randall Tier. Or maybe it was abundantly clear since he had made that phone call, esentially telling Hannibal to run. He checks for a pulse, still heaving, shivering from the cold, barely registering the pain shooting up from his wounds. His cheek is searing with it, as the salt water did it no good. But – and he realises he had stopped breathing – there is a faint flutter against his fingers, at the base of Hannibal’s throat.

  
He wondered how Hannibal’s reverence for death coexisted with his almost-superhuman survival instinct. Feeling strangely disconnected from himself, he finally collapses next to the would-be victim of his suicide. Hannibal is dead, for all means and purposes. Will Graham is dead as well, because he also hit his head on the way down, and they were both lost to the roiling Atlantic. Through a sick twist of fate, he was not faced with the base, primal fear of losing what he just barely decided to keep. Up on the cliff, allowing himself the deliverance to his ache, he’d felt Hannibal’s heart, heard the rapid pounding of its pumps through the layers of flesh and bone, and he felt like the indifferent spectator of everything inside himself screaming simultaneously. _I’ll love you to death. I’ll love you in death._

  
Watching Hannibal slipping away had felt like he was fading, as if his heart had been cut out from his chest, and instead of dying, through some miracle, he had to watch it stop its beats, slowly, one by one; he couldn’t.

* * *

 

When Hannibal finally stirs, he feels as if his side is burning. He has a fractured arm, if not a downright broken one, judging by heavy pain nestled inside it. A concussion should be added to the list, most likely bestowed upon him by the jagged rocks, and also responsible for his blackout.

  
He has survived worse.

  
Silently, he opens his eyes to a low ceiling, and to the overwhelming smell of disinfectant. There is a poorly made bandage around his torso, and he can hear the tinkering of metal from the small bathroom nearby. Judging from the hissing sounds of pain, Will is stitching up his wounds; Hannibal makes an attempt at sitting up, clenches his teeth – yes, that is definitely a broken arm.

  
The sounds stop, and Will emerges from the bathroom, damp curls plastered to his forehead and hands stained with blood. He looks exhausted, ready to collapse, but his eyes have a sharp glint to them, the focus of determination.

  
Silence stretches on. With the interrupted, mechanical moves of a dreamer, Will draws out his steps, approaches the bed, a walking paradox of unreadable motives, and sits down with a heavy exhale.

  
”Do we talk about teacups, and time, and the rules of disorder?”, he says, voice scratched raw from ocean water.

  
Hannibal chuckles.

 

”What need do dead men have of those, I wonder,” he answers, voice just as ragged. ” _’My course is set for uncharted sea.’_ ”.

* * *

  
The cottage Will had stumbled into, Hannibal gathered sloppily in his arms, was not a terribly handsome one, albeit furnished enough. Will had managed to take the bullet out, using the first-aid kit he found in the smal kitchenette. He felt vaguely grateful when the routine of washing and binding a wound set in; the small comforts of a violent life, one could say.

  
After their short exchange, Hannibal had quickly fallen asleep. Will put ice on his concussion, curiously surveying his own lack of discomfort regarding the act. Touching Hannibal maintained its wondrous quality, yet it didn’t feel alien anymore. It felt deserved, fought for. Somehow, it even felt natural that the man would quote Dante first thing after nearly drowning.

  
First thing after Will nearly drowned them both. Hannibal’s features were slightly distressed, this time, so Will was not able to find the crushing acceptance he’d seen underwater, in the crown of wrinkles surrounding closed eyes.

  
He had gotten himself a chair, and was thus keeping watch of Hannibal. Images kept overlaying over his high cheekbones and mussled hair, frozen stills of a Hannibal smiling triumphantly on the other side of bars, of a Hannibal drenched in blood and with eyes drenched in tears, of a Hannibal smiling fondly. In the end, sleep came to him quickly, like a tiger closing in on a deer, indifferent about the uncomfortable position he was in. It was a deep sleep, for once, unpolluted by dreams.

When he slowly came to consciousness, the bed was empty. Will jumped out of the chair, blinking owlishly; for some reason, he felt panic coursing through him at the sight, but his wounds reacted badly to the sudden movement, and he folded back with a groan.

  
”For a man who was stabbed repeatedly and then almost drowned, you remain as vivacious as ever, Will.”

Hannibal had fashioned a make-shift sling for his left arm, somehow, and was rummaging through the first-aid kit in the kitchen. His voice carried naturally, nonchalantly, and Will suddenly felt the space between them acutely; the forceful whirlwind of emotions inside him kept surprising him, and he wondered how much of it was his own.

  
”Although I would not expect anything less of your transformation,” Hannibal continued, almost as an after-thought.

  
Transformation. Will dragged a hand over his face, remembering his own words, the Becoming he had foreseen for himself. His mind felt like the arching bolt of a cathedral, echoing the remnants of a symphony. He kept coming back to an empty place inside himself, like a child feeling the inside of his mouth for the hole a tooth left in its wake.

”Death... has that effect,” he speaks after a while, thoughtfully.

  
Hannibal does not answer. He is trying to put together some food, of course; and strangely, his movements retain their grace, even though he is only using one hand. Will brings his creaky chair to the table, sitting down with a wince. After a few minutes, Hannibal presents him with a full plate, joining him.

  
”A healthy protein scramble. Quite recommended in our circumstances,” he comments while picking up his fork, ready to dive in into the omelette.

  
Something rings familiar in those words, and Will is suddenly brought back to a grey, lively morning, years ago: _I don’t find you that interesting_.

He lets himself fall back in his chair, and allows himself the sting of sharp irony, that years from that fateful encounter, he’s sitting in a godforsaken cottage on the shore of the Atlantic ocean, eating omelette with the serial killer he had been hunting, whom he incindentally also saved from certain death by drowning. The same man who attempted to murder him time and time again; the same man he attempted to murder time and time again.

He can’t stop the sound that comes out of him, something between a chuckle and a sigh. Hannibal gives him a curious glance, and Will is once again hit by the knowledge of Hannibal’s openness, because this man is very much not the same man who sat across from him in his home, feeding him omelette with people in it. Or, rather, the impenetrable mask of Hannibal’s face had become a language he could speak fluently.

Does Hannibal ever reminisce of those times, of well-pressed suits and opulent music, of hunting unseen in the night, and of painting his beautiful tableaus for an uncomprehending world? After the butterfly knife embedded itself into Will’s skin, did Hannibal grasp at the hole inside himself as well?

Not a hole anymore, Will backtracks. Hannibal had had the time to fill it. But what nestled inside the gaping space he had carved out for Will was still a thing of wonder, something to be prodded at, something to enrage and to throw himself against over and over again, like a bird against glass.

  
He chooses his words carefully.

  
”We need to leave this place soon. Jack will come looking.”

Hannibal pauses before eating the last of his food.

”He will find the Great Red Dragon, slayed. And lingering ghosts lost to the sea.”

A moment of silence passes between them. Unexpectedly, Hannibal reaches out, fingertips barely grazing the line of stitches covering Will’s cheek. His face looks thoughtful, almost nostalgic, and Will reins in the impulse to nudge into his hand.

”Why didn’t you use your gun, Will?”, he finally asks, letting his hand fall away.

The gun. Will is almost startled at the realization, childishly surprised. Hannibal knows it, too; it simply never occurred to Will to use it. The Dragon belonged to both of them. They both saw parts of themselves in him, and he was theirs to slaughter together on the sacrificial altar of their love. He’d been the long-awaited consummation.

”Guns lack intimacy,” he finally answers, echoing the past once more, many other words stuck in his throat.

  
Because he sees a need for reassurance in Hannibal’s words, that makes him heady with satisfaction, and hunger, and joy. Hannibal cannot predict him, but he desires to explore, to bask in the radiance of Will’s Becoming, entirely unconcerned with the fact that Will tried to kill him barely hours prior. And thus, he cannot stop the rise of a vicious, beastly need to scratch and dig at Hannibal’s defenses, to see just how far he has sunk his lure.

  
Hannibal rises from his chair, his face unreadable, but Will can sense he is still unsure. He can hear the gears turning, and he delights in the feeling of having that single-minded focus, sharp as a scalpel, aimed solely at him. When Hannibal speaks, it is with a strange mix of pride and resignation.

  
”After all is said and done, I cannot help but congratulate you, Will. You did kill me with your hands.”

  
They remain unmoving for a long time, in the silence and in the darkening tint of evening, feeling the ghostly tendrils of their past chaffing at the seams, ready to reveal an obvious truth; somehow, it feels like the pull of fate. 


	2. Chapter 2

            When the sound of a car pulling up dragged Will out of his half-sleep, Hannibal was already at the window. He got to his feet, suddenly alert, but not afraid. Soundlessly, he approached the window, just as the driver slammed the door shut – could it be Jack, with all his horses and all his men? No, there would be more noise, and the breaking down of doors and windows, guns training red dots on their chests.

            Hannibal is still as a statue behind the door; Will can’t help but feel fascination at the way his eyes become devoid of light, and his limbs go taught with the patience of a predator about to strike. But when the clear owner of the cottage tries to insert his key into the lock, he finds it broken, and after a second’s pause, he slowly pushes the door open. Hannibal has the disadvantage of a broken arm. Will pounces, getting the man into a headlock, while the other thrashes and claws at his arms. He can feel the body underneath him grow fainter and fainter, like the dimming of a candle. Before the fire dies out, he lets go.

            Hannibal had not moved from his place, a quiet observer. Will’s breathing is slightly elevated, and he distantly feels the pull of stitches when he kneels. The man, in his fifties, bald and reeking of loneliness, still has the keys to the car clutched into his hand.

            They move like clockwork. Will relieves their unconscious, accidental host from his wallet, goes to check the gas, while Hannibal packs up what food they have for the road and brings them a change of clothes.

            Will, with his cut up face and large bandage, would be easily noticed, so he takes the hoodie and the slightly too large pants, changing quickly in the bathroom. On impulse, he also takes up a razor and shaves away his stubble, because he knows how absurdly young he appears without it. And indeed, the face staring back at him from the mirror looks ridiculously boyish, as if he’s a reckless youngster, at war with the world.

            A loud hiss of pain interrupts his contemplation. Will had not even attempted to help Hannibal, easily imagining his reaction, discomfortingly similar to the one of a large cat, licking proudly at its own wounds. But he forgoes all that and exits the bathroom, determined to leave all scruples behind. They needed to leave as quickly as possible.

            But the hiss he had heard was turning into a choke, and the source of it was not Hannibal, struggling to change clothes with a broken arm. The man on the floor was awake, and Hannibal’s right hand was gripping one of the kitchen knives. The blade was dripping red. Hannibal was standing shirtless over the soon-to-be corpse, staring almost absently at the spurts of blood widening the pool on the floor, slowly surrounding the opened throat.

            A similar image flashes in his mind’s eye. Small hands pushing at the wide cut carved in her neck, blood gushing out in spurts, while Abigail chokes and chokes and chokes.

             Will acted without thinking. Anger was coursing in his veins, bitingly cold anger, as he pried the knife away from Hannibal’s fingers and threw it across the room; it clattered against the cupboard, and fell into the sink with a loud clang.

            Will’s teeth were clenched, and it made his wounded cheek sting.

            ”He saw my face, Will,” Hannibal spoke softly. The show of Will’s fury did not draw a single reaction out of him.

            That common-garden failure, that sad man with his lonely cottage, was not in any way similar to the monsters Will had slayed. He was going to die of old age, insignificant, and maybe the wife from his first marriage would have remembered him, when days were rainy.

            ”No innocents, Hannibal. Not when we can help it,” he finally grounds out, and he stifles the impulse to squeeze Hannibal’s face between his hands, and repeat his words a second and a third time, like a prayer.

            Hannibal gives him one of his sphynx-like smiles, and Will is suddenly reminded of a time when they were seated across each other in his office, and Hannibal was very much _not_ being his psychiatrist.

            ”Is there such a thing as innocence?”, he asks, almost playfully.

            Will feels like dragging a hand over his face.

            ”Is there a difference between killing a squirell and hunting down a tiger?”, he sighs.   

            Hannibal’s eyes take up that sharp precision of analysis, and Will feels as if his thoughts are devoured, pulled out like wires from his eyes. Hannibal’s head tilts to the left, and his face becomes shuttered. He sidesteps Will, picking up an ugly shirt from the bed.

            ”Am I to take this as the first of your ten commandments?” he asks, voice lacking inflexion.

            He’s not looking at Will. In spite of the seriousness of the question, Will cannot help but feel a twinge of amused affection at the way Hannibal eyes the greenish shirt. Distaste rolls off of him in waves. Wearing that prison garb must have taken quite the toll on him.

            Paradoxally, it reminds him of Molly’s discomfort, a little more than a year ago, when she had to attend a wedding. The dress, chosen by one of her friends, was distinctly elegant, and the heels made her look like a fierce amazon. Yet, she grumbled about having to go through this sort of formal torture the entire evening.

            Whereas Hannibal would have quite literally killed to get his hands on a proper suit. Molly reminded Will of himself, or... maybe not himself, but a past version of it, or one he dreamed up, a long time ago. She had felt like a grounding anchor, a post to hitch himself to, in the moving sand of his sense of self.

            And then she felt like a fragile thread, going tenser and tenser with each visit he made to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, ready to snap at any second. Hannibal’s pull was too heavy, and Will couldn’t fool himself into believeing he had not known his unmooring would take place. Once an object enters the horizon of a black hole, time becomes something else, and there is no going back.

            They hadn’t talked about what happened, yet. Will thought that Hannibal feared a clarification of his motives, or of his goals, but he was not confused. He didn’t feel disoriented. He felt solid, like he knew himself instinctively.  

            ”We need to dispose of the body,” he finally says, watching Hannibal dress.

            He realizes that this is the first time he was seeing Hannibal without clothing. There’s the mangled brand on his back, but his torso is well-defined, signaling a coiling sort of strength, like snakes drawing back first before biting. Leaving his shirt unbuttoned, Hannibal starts to uncoil the bandage, then he disinfects the wound again. It was not looking as bad as it let itself seem, at first; it would heal cleanly enough, the bullet not having grazed any vital organs.

            Seeing Hannibal being human never lost its novelty.

*

            After the body was discarded into the sea, and the floor of the cottage cleaned of blood, Hannibal had settled in the passanger seat, contemplating the strange sight of Will’s clean-shaven face. He felt like Will reacted similarly, when Hannibal had put on his victim’s fallen glasses. With the tweed jacket, and the sling, he was sure to look like a non-threatening highschool teacher, who had had an unfortunate accident while riding his bike.

            Will first drove aimlessly. The car was actually a small van, nothing like his Bentley. In the first hours of morning, the sun shone brightly, and Will’s squinted eyes made him look even younger, his hair a tangled mess of curls under the hood. He had taken to the frustrating habit of completely evading questions, Hannibal had dully noted; but the silence was an answer in itself.

            He deliberated for a while, not being sure which one of his two closest hideouts would be most appropriate. The farthest, however, had forged identifications and passports for Will as well, because he had set it up before the smell of Freddie’s shampoo had invaded his nostrils, years ago.

            He gives Will the directions, not adding anything else. It still feels like treading unexplored territory; and Will’s reactions, as ever, were hard to predict. His anger with Hannibal was understandable, but not by any means easily accepted. Did Will mean to be his moral compass? Did Will mean to have him kill only the vile, the evil, the killers of the Earth?

            _Have him._ Hannibal feels his lips curling, rather with amusement than anything else. Will did have the upper-hand, in this game they were reborn into. Newly emerged from his chrysalis, this cunning Will was enticing him with the silent promise of his presence, making him tread as if on a landmine. Most likely, there would always be a part of Will that wanted to punish him for his existence, and for landing the poisonous meteor of his influence into his life; but Hannibal would eat it up, just like everything else, because it was the only way Will could let himself be the Will on the cliff, whispering through bloody lips and reaching out with bloody hands.

            ”Hannibal.”

            Will’s quiet tone drags him away from the window. They were going around Baltimore, and Hannibal could distantly recognize houses and shops, remembering people from a life that seems far away.

            When he turns, Will is not looking at him.

            ”I... need you to show me,” he says, and the last word is a slightly shaky exhale. ”I know who I am. I need you... to show me who you are, when you’re with me.”

            Will purses his lips, and goes silent.

            Hannibal inhales deeply, and commits the tentative words into the brightest corner of his memory palace, still unaccustomed to the feeling of exhilaration. After all, in the last three years, Will had painfully been absent.

            The sun is becoming redder and redder, a portal to a world of fire. Hannibal looks up to the sky, following the trail of dust filtered through the light, and smiles quietly.

            This was a start. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much, to everyone who left kudos and commented on the first chapter. it encouraged me greatly. this fic is basically me breaking out from the cage of a writer's block that's lasted 3 years.  
> I do hope you've liked this one too.


	3. Chapter 3

_He doesn’t understand why his hands are stained with feathers; they seem to cling to his skin, his hair, his eyes. Black feathers, almost obsidian. His hands are buried inside a sea of feathers, seeking... something. Something he’d know when he found it, and when he does he finally rises his eyes, but he can’t stop. He grips at them, hard, and the blood devours his fingers, insidious. It’s not the stag, and he’s not breaking antlers... suddenly, it’s Hannibal, and he’s ripping the wings of the Fallen apart._

            His awakening holds nothing of the distress dreams usually filled him with. Will opens his eyes slowly, sits up, drags a hand over his eyes. It is still dark out.

            Hannibal’s hideout turned out to be a cabin, deeply buried in the forest; however, it is worthy of Hannibal’s standards. It is spacious enough, built out of dark wood, elegantly furnished; however, there is only one large bed, and Hannibal, ever the courteous host, had insisted that Will would take it, and that he sleep on the couch. As expected, he also had his medical supplies at the cabin, and he had taken on the task of checking Will’s wounds.

            The journey had not been good for either of them. Hannibal’s bandage was stained red yet again, and the ghost of blood loss was still looming. Will had wordlessly helped Hannibal in improving his sling, distantly wondering at the way Hannibal’s face held no sign of pain. His hands lingered for halves of seconds, on Hannibal’s bare skin.

            Hannibal had said something about the irony of fate. And it was ironic, that Will was trying to mend what he had himself broken; he’d wanted to voice that he had meant to destroy them both, completely, not cripple them. But Hannibal’s eyes had that distant quality of revisiting memories, so Will asked himself who else had dressed his wounds before, who had wielded needle and thread and pierced his skin.

            Wondering was redundant. Hannibal’s latest companion had been Bedelia, his unfortunate psychiatrist, drugged and manipulated into wearing the identity of Lydia Fell, mind torn and shattered to fit Hannibal’s commands.

            Will’s interactions with the strange woman had been... tense. Their conversations resembled violent chess matches, words thrown back and forth, equally meant to startle and to shed light on the inevitable subject of their shared acquiantance. Obfuscation and insinuation were Bedelia’s weapons of choice, but she wielded directness most admirably, cutting down at the core of matters.

            Hannibal, in love. Hannibal, on the run in Europe, with his morbidly fascinated bride. Hannibal, waiting hours and hours in the snow, and surrendering to the FBI... as Will suspected he would.

            Suspected. Will’s lips twitch. Hoped, maybe. Wanted – definitely.

            Since that phantom touch of fingertips against the mangled skin of his cheek, Hannibal had kept only to necessary touches, as if he was in the presence of an especially timid prey, easily spooked at the first sudden movement. What did Hannibal understand from his earlier words, in the car? Did he take them as an invitation, an opening, an opportunity? A warning? Because since then, Hannibal had begun emanating that superior aura of control once again, bit by bit, like a fire spreading its heat.

            It was... displeasing, and Will had to admit he wanted it gone, because he had glimpsed what lived underneath, and it was a bloody creature of vengeance, with tears in its eyes and steel in its hands; but he had seen who lived underneath, too. The man clad in a prison suit, calling out after him, to get him to stay longer, and the man in whose arms he had welcomed death. Hannibal’s love had the inevitability of a force of nature, huge and bright like the Sun; however, it also proved to be akin to thunderstorms: preceded by calm and empty skies.

            It had become a fixed point in the quantum plane of Will’s existence. His mind, built out of convoluted mirrors, had attached itself to Hannibal years ago, in the silence of his office, feeding on words like _paddle_ and _friend_. Then, the words changed: _Devil, cannibal, murderer._ But it was like rearranging the furniture, in a house that remained the same.

            Will was not the sum of a set of influences. Rather, he was the essence of that survival instinct buried inside him, to fight and always fight, resist by any means necessary, and keep who he was intact.

            He stills, and listens for Hannibal’s breath in the darkness. It is barely audible, but even. Had he surrendered, on that cliff, entirely and completely; or was it an act of defiance, of childishly tasting the forbidden fruit before crushing the head of the snake?

            The sounds of the night had strangely stopped, as if the darkness ceased breathing. Will gets up, walks barefooted on the carpet, approaches the coach slowly. His eyes had adjusted to the subtle light of the moon; Hannibal was lying on his back, hair spread against the pillow. His complexion had taken the brunt of prison, of blood loss and exhaustion, and his cheekbones stood out in even starker contrast.

            There was a time, he remembers, when Hannibal eyes had flashed red to him, on the other side of bars. Other times, they were nearly black, the sort of black that devours. Now, Will wants to sneak behind Hannibal’s eyelids, and contemplate eyes addled by sleep, vulnerable and unseeing.

            Gaze still fixed on Hannibal’s blank features, he silently leans over him, the witchy villain of a fairy tale. Slowly, carefully, he rests his arms on either side of Hannibal’s head, watches intently for any sort of reaction, any change in the rhythm of his steady breathing. When it does not come, he moves his legs fraction by fraction, settling his knees on the rather hard surface of the couch; only then he realizes he’s been holding his breath.

            Inch by inch, he lowers himself, eyes scanning with terrifying focus, until he ends up straddling Hannibal; still, he doesn’t let his body weigh down on the sleeping one under him. He lifts his arms, and rises slowly. He’s on kis knees now, standing on top of Hannibal, and Hannibal is _sleeping._

Is he sleeping? Could he be faking it? Will lets time count its seconds, one by one, lost in the silence and in the rush he feels, feeling his head tilt to the side and his lips part. Hannibal’s countenance had not changed. His chest was rising regularly, and Will’s eyes kept tracing a vein in his neck, where blood was pulsing visibly, in tandem with his breath.

            His right hand raises to trace it, or to rip it, and carefully, he wraps his fingers around Hannibal’s throat, one by one, finally letting himself settle on top of him; the flesh pulses delicately, flutters against his skin, warm and inviting.

            Will starts to squeeze; Hannibal opens his eyes. Will can feel him startle, the warmth of Hannibal settling inside his bones, making his head spin. He can feel his insides resonate like the chords of a violin; the rush, a heady rush, is what’s making him distracted and almost incapable of detachment. Will knows it belongs to both. Hannibal’s good hand twitches, but it doesn’t rise, while Will starts pushing harder and harder, relishing in the way skin molds against his fingers; Hannibal’s face starts to color, but his eyes are not surprised; Will had not even considered the possibility of fear. He sees the obligatory flash of instinct, the calculated and cold look of the predator about to strike; but it is quickly replaced with a smile, a sharp smile that reminds Will of the once-ghost of Hannibal, on the floor, flickering against the face of Randall Tier, the beast he had beaten to death.

            The Earth would wither and die, without the Sun.

            Hannibal starts heaving, and then choking, and Will lets go with an answering grin, anticipating the image of Hannibal greedily coming up for breath; but Hannibal, as if he’d read his thoughts, forces himself to inhale and exhale, calmly, almost professionally.

            Will watches him with angry fascination. Hannibal laughs.

            ”Have you finally convinced yourself?”, he asks with a gruff voice, hand still at his side, body pliant under his attacker.

            The feeling of helplessness spills into Will’s chest with the singular brutality of love, painful to the point of tears. He rests his elbows on each side of Hannibal’s head, lets his forehead lean onto Hannibal’s shoulder, nose buried in the crook of his neck; crouches over him, and sits unmoving, while Hannibal’s breath starts to return to its original peaceful rhythm. He closes his eyes, breathes in, and realizes that there is no fulfilling this need. He wants to intermingle the roads and ridges of his brain with Hannibal’s, their aortas and their muscles and their veins, the map of their blood vessels and the woods of their cells.

            Maybe the desire to kill him has always been a measure of how much he needed him.

*

            Hannibal comes to awareness quickly; his biological clock tells him that it must be around 7 AM. His right side feels heavy, and warm, and for a second, he wonders the same ridiculous thing he had wondered when he had first opened his eyes, throbbing with pain and shivering in a dark cottage; but Hannibal did not dream.

            He opens his eyes. The sun is filtering through the window, white and greenish, with all the shadows of the forest. Next to him, Will’s eyelashes cast their own shadows, over cheeks that have begun to regain their stubble. He’s holding onto Hannibal’s arm, half of his body draped across Hannibal’s right, and their legs are tangled. His head is resting on Hannibal’s chest, curls spilling darkly, and his features are calm, yet somehow solemn.  

            Barely a few days ago, Will had lured him into his embrace, like a siren would her sailor, and plunged them into the water to drown. Last night, Will had conquered him like a demon, wordless and surreal, attempting to choke him.

            Hannibal turns his head, inhales the scent of Will. Closes his eyes again, and stays still, and smiles with the ferocity of hunger satisfied.

            ”Good morning, Will.”

            Wil stops feigning sleep, but his eyes do not open. He stretches his limbs for a bit, hair rustling under Hannibal’s nose, and his legs tighten. Hannibal had not known what to expect, what defenses, if any, to plan. This is surely not a worst-case scenario.

            Will lets out a chuckle.

            ”What’s so amusing?”, Hannibal asks, voice resonating intimately in the small space between them, still a bit rough.

            ” _’He who holds the Devil, let him hold Him well...’_ ”, Will intones, with the mischief of an inside joke, strands of sleep still caught onto the consonants. ”Bedelia would be proud.”

            If anything, Hannibal thinks that the way people keep associating him with the Devil is rather flattering.

            ”Ah, my dear doctor du Maurier. How is she faring?”, he inquires, amused.

            Something inside Will’s frame goes tense, before he gently disentangles himself and gets up. Hannibal feels the loss acutely; it leaves him feeling bare. A strange, strange sentiment, its flame only ever kindled by Will, and one he cannot get enough of.

            ”As well as you’d expect, after being told Hannibal Lecter was going to escape,” Will answers, with a small frown, certainly recalling their last interaction.

            ”I would say very well indeed, after being told Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham are now names to be engraved on empty tombstones,” Hannibal rectifies.

            However, Bedelia was very aware of the value of doubt. He can envision it already: the table, the setting, the music, the clothes, her last resorts. Remembers the teasing taste of her mouth. Most of all, though, he can see Will’s lips closing around a silver fork, righteous glint of anger in his eyes.

            ”I believe we owe her an urgent visit,” Hannibal muses then.

            Will is still sitting next to him, eyes fixed on Hannibal, who has already begun to plan breakfast. If only he had had the time to take his pound of flesh from the unfortunate owner of that lovely cottage.

            ”Ready or not, here we come,” Will says then, with a crooked sort of smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...well, writing THAT definitely proved interesting. I still squint at the page and wonder if I got it right.   
>  ah, and for some fitting musical atmosphere, this mix is amazing: http://8tracks.com/volens/incarnated-and-mine. it got my words truly flowing.


	4. Chapter 4

            Death is not the disease, but the cure.

            The cure to life’s endless suffering? Was it buddhism that equaled the act of living to the act of suffering? The endgame, the only way out was supposed to be the obliteration of the illusion of self. Becoming... nothing. Or rather, returning home to the primordial nothingness. Desire was the blood pulsing inside the heart of life, man’s ability to want – the source of all pain, all happenstance.

            Will follows the graceful movements of Hannibal’s hand over paper, and imagines it still, ready to rot away, eaten by the worms in the earth’s underbelly. Frozen hands, no longer able to spread death around their owner like an infectious disease; thus, only death could be the cure to the sickness Hannibal brought upon the world.

            His thoughts halt, for a second. He did not... want Hannibal’s death. But he wanted something from Hannibal, and the desire, root of all evil and all suffering, was splashing and turning inside of him like waves. _Something_ keeps drawing him to Hannibal, but it’s not the same pull as before; it has become mixed with different elements, since the fall, and Will has been struggling for days to understand its alchemy.

            He had tried to sleep death’s slumber, taking Hannibal down with him. While Hannibal seemed to have emerged unscathed, Will feels the disease spreading, and his fingers twitch at the memory of warm skin, yielding underneath them. Since he had proved to himself that he didn’t want to be cured of Hannibal, the memory kept reappearing with startling clarity; he had dreamt of it, too, except it went differently. In the dreamworld, Hannibal’s arm was healed, and he’d seized Will’s throat and reversed their positions in the blink of an eye; Will had the time to feel something like heat coil inside his gut, before waking.

            Will feels a bitter smile pull at the corner of his mouth, and he puts down the book. For the last half an hour, he had been staring at the page without comprehending a word. He thinks that he might understand Hannibal’s raw need for physicality, now.

*

            Necessary arrangements had been made. Hannibal peers at the window, contemplates the orange light of sunset filter between the trees, and ponders what song would be most fitting for his good doctor’s last supper.

            He ponders what death would most befit Alana Bloom, now far away in Europe, huddled in hiding with her beloved family, and his eyes flicker to Will’s profile, illuminated by the blue light of the tablet. He ponders what sort of anger would distort those features, if Hannibal’s fingers were to slide into eyesockets and and gouge beautiful blue eyes out, the eyes of a very brave woman – the woman who had been brave, when she should have been blind. For everything there was a price, and his gold was worth more than a firstborn; Hannibal could hear their screams. Missed hearing screams.

            Will doesn’t startle when Hannibal naturally leans over his shoulder, peering at the screen of the tablet. However, the prickle of awareness is insistent; he can hear Hannibal’s breathing, and his eyes follow the scar on his cheekbone. Their matching scar.

            ”The FBI is holding the affair quite closely to their chest”, he observes with no small amount of amusement. His voices resonates close to Will’s ear.

            After the news of Hannibal’s escape had gotten out, the world had indeed fallen to panic; the stampede had been great. But now, the recent and shocking news was that of Hannibal Lecter’s demise, along with the one of Will Graham. FBI officials had fed the media a simple story: Will Graham, after pretending to aid the criminal’s escape, had fought the Devil, and in their struggle, they had fell off a cliff and died.

            Suddenly, Will Graham was a hero. A martyr.

            ”It’s a fortunate thing, that I had the foresight to angle the Dragon’s camera towards the window,” Hannibal comments. Will’s scent is slightly different, as if saltwater had become impossible to wash out of his skin.

            ”They must still be searching for our bodies”, Will remarks almost absently. ”Since they haven’t released anything to the press about it.”

            Hannibal is pleased, but Will must be thinking of Molly Graham and Walter Graham; he hadn’t opened any article about himself.

            ”It took Jack quite some time to find the house”, Hannibal says, while sitting down next to Will. ”His years are catching up with him.”

            ”Unless you catch up with him.”

            Hannibal tilts his head, and regards Will with an upturn of his lips; Will doesn’t lift his gaze.

            ”Yes, unless we do.”

            Will infinitesimally shifts away from Hannibal, and Hannibal is once again pondering at the distance Will is keeping. He had noticed the way Will’s eyes follow him around the room, and the act inspires a peculiar feeling he can’t quite place; perhaps the sensation of being watched with such unrelenting focus was distracting.

            Hannibal slowly brings his hands to Will’s cheek, follows the line of the wound ever so slightly, just like the first day after the fall. Will sits still, but his gaze finds Hannibal’s.

            The silence between them stretches like a chord.

            ”If you had let me do the stitching, it would have scarred less.”

            Will’s eyes hold something dangerous. Brusquely, his fingers curl around Hannibal’s wrist.

            ”Can’t have anyone else’s marks on me, can you,” he muses with an almost teasing quality. Yet his hand tightens.

            Hannibal watches him from under hooded eyes. Evening is casting its blue obscurity around the room, and the screen of the tablet has just gone dark from inactivity.

            The tension coils around them like a vice, unspoken and ferocious. Hannibal realizes what the prickling feeling was, with a pang of surprise: the feeling of being stalked; so he suppresses the smile threatening to bare his teeth, and the hunger blossoming in his eyes.

            Hannibal remembers Will’s words, and thinks that Will might not have known what he really meant. Was Will aware of what _who you are, when you’re with me_ could be?

            Will suddenly lets go, as if Hannibal’s hand is scalding hot. The tension does not break.

*

            At first, she cannot distinguish between reality and dream. Hannibal, piercing the skin of her neck with a needle; Hannibal’s polite smile and coldy delighted eyes; these images had all been part of her dreams, and her fears, and her worst-case scenarios. Bedelia blinks heavily, trying to steady her vision.

            Oh. This must all be real, then. A distant, muted pain is pulling at her awareness, and she finally locates the source of it: a cleanly-wrapped stump where a leg used to be.

            Oh. She stares at the opulent dish lying on the table. Her perception is... distorted, too lively, too colorful. Her heartbeat quickens, chest rising rapidly, and she sighs with elation. Of course Hannibal wasn’t dead. She’d told herself, just like the FBI did and the rest of the world did, that nobody could have survived that fall; in truth, she’d been all too aware of the excuse she was giving herself.

            She had already done the running gag. Maybe this was her end. This was always her end. Hannibal was her end. _Rage, rage against the dying of the light..._ Thoughts swirled in her head, reluctant to settle; but she clings to an inborn streak of defiance. Rapidly, she lifts her hand and grabs the oyster fork, hiding it under the table.

            ”Awake already?”, she hears a familiar voice, and a part of her starts laughing hysterically when she realizes she had missed it. ”I apologize for not being here, Bedelia. We were opening the wine. I do believe it’s your favourite.”

            _We._ Bedelia eyes the third chair, and grips the fork tighter. Hannibal had not escaped his confines, after all; prison had swallowed him a long time before Jack Crawford put him in a cell. Hannibal was still Will Graham’s, and Bedelia’s machinations had failed. Her intent to free Hannibal had failed; Will Graham had won.

            Hannibal simply did not know it yet. She looks at him with glazed eyes; he was thinner, and his hair had strands of silver. But his smile was the same. She distantly wonders how he managed to drug her, cut off her leg, prepare it, set the table, dress her up and carry her to the chair with a broken arm – but then Will Graham enters her vision, rendering her musings obsolete. His face carries an ugly wound, still in the process of healing.

            Marked. Bedelia can’t suppress a smirk at the thought of Hannibal’s discontent. With a sick twist to her stomach, she realizes that she’s looking forward to this.

            ”Prison has made you no less graceful, Hannibal,” she finally speaks; her tongue feels strange, heavy.

            He bowes his head slightly, and gives her a small smile.

            ”Victimhood has also treated you well, I see,” he remarks.

            Bedelia smiles, tight-lipped. It had – to Will Graham’s chagrin, undoubtedly.

            ”I cannot say the same of you,” she muses. ”Death must have rejected you sourly.”

            Will sits down between them, and his eyes glint. She knows she’s hit a nerve.

            ”Don’t worry,” he says, after a slight pause, tone filled with mocking concern. ”I’m sure it will welcome you with open arms... when the time comes.”

            The sharp edge he had softened in their first sessions is out in the open now; Bedelia can see it, clear as day, the spark of possessiveness. She can feel herself shaking her head, as if in disbelief. Hannibal must be enjoying this immensely.

            ”Come,” he tells them, fork and knife in hand, as if scolding children. ”Let us eat. Our meal will get cold.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...that's not the last of the Bedelia scene. I hope I managed to keep to her character.  
>  I hope you've liked this one too! comments are to a writer what stray dogs are to Will Graham; we take them home and cuddle with them and stare at the fire while petting them absently.

**Author's Note:**

> ...well, I haven't posted fanfiction in years, and I feel obligated to go through the ''this is my first Hannigram fanfic ever'' ritual. the finale destroyed me, but it also made me go mad with the need to write something. so I finally put my headcanon into words. I think I will be continuing this, as an evolution of their relationship; it will probably be quite the slow burn, though. I'm a sucker for those.  
>  oh, and I apologize for any mistakes. I'm not a native English speaker. the quote that Hannibal uses is also from Dante.


End file.
